Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday January 25, 2013 @01:08PM
from the come-to-america-and-let-our-robots-replace-you dept.

dcblogs writes "A bipartisan group of Senators is planning to introduce a bill that allows the H-1B visa cap to rise automatically with demand to a maximum of 300,000 visas annually. This 20-page bill, called the Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 or the 'I-Squared Act of 2013,' is being developed by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.). It may be introduced next week. Presently, the U.S. has an H-1B visa cap of 65,000. There are another 20,000 H-1B visas set aside for advanced degree gradates of U.S. universities, for 85,000 in total. Under the new bill, the base H-1B cap would increase from 65,000 to 115,000. But the cap would be allowed to rise automatically with demand, according to a draft of the legislation."

I dont think the workers from poorer countries think they are being screwed. I mean, from the standpoint of what they could be making, maybe, but from the standpoint of what they were making, not really.

Arguments like yours are based on the assumption by Milton Friedman and his ilk that jobs are just as fungible as money, and that it's *your fault* that your price is too high by your simply living in civilization. You are being forced into a race to the bottom. Races to the bottom have no winners.

I doubt Friedman would have looked positively on this. I'm a libertarian, and I'm totally against this. It's interfering with a market. There will always be "more demand" because they'll just drive wages low enough that no American will want the jobs.

This isn't the free market at work. The free market raises wages when there's a labor shortage. No, this is crony capitalism, a very different beast.

I was not aware we had an infinite supply of anything, let alone of skilled / employable CS or IT workers.

If I have a 10 gallon bucket, 11 gallons of water is the same as "infinite" for some operations. The bottom line is that if x IT jobs open up in the US then we can always find x foreign workers to fill them at a lower wage. For the market to think the supply is infinite, I only need one more worker than there are jobs.

Look, I explained this in an earlier post on this subject. My wife came here on an H-1A as an RN. They brought her to work for substandard wages at shitty nursing homes. The nursing homes could easily have hired Americans to work for them, but they found it was cheaper to claim they couldn't find anybody (a legal requirement for petitioning an H-1x) and then hire some foreigner to do it at a paltry wage. They're supposed to treat them well, but trust me - there's a world of difference between a boss that can fire you and one that can put your ass on a plane back to Asia.

I obviously benefitted greatly from this arrangement, and I'm damned glad that I have an asian babe for a wife. Seriously. But the bottom line is that these companies are depressing wages by bringing folks like her over here and then creating a vicious cycle whereby the depressed wages cause even fewer people to want to join that part of the labor market causing them to bring over more foreigners.

I'm not anti-corporate. Hell, I have an ownership stake in multiple companies. What you see here is crony capitalism, and it's good for the cronies and bad for the rest of us. We need to put an end to work visas like this all together and let the market pull these wages up to the level that they should be.

H1-B is dual-intent visa, which means that a person staying on it in US is legally allowed to express intent to immigrate. And it's one of the few venues that let you do skilled immigration, since that requires sponsorship of some company, and they usually won't do it unless you've already proven their worth to them (i.e. work for them)

If not enough people on H1-B eventually immigrate, then maybe you'll want to change that. I'm an H1-B employee with intent to immigrate, and right now the biggest hassle is that the green card application process is severely backlogged - today, they're still processing applications from early 2007! So, realistically, for someone looking to come to US, they're looking at 5 years before their application is even reviewed, then several months to a year before it's approved. Fix that, and I bet you'll see far more people staying. I mean, why wouldn't we want to? US isn't perfect, but it's vastly better than all developing countries out there.

My co-worker came here from the phillipines on a work visa. The money she made here was decent, but great considering that it's getting sent home to her family where a dollar has more mileage. Got diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at 27 (she didn't even smoke).

She didn't even say anything to anybody. I almost complimented her on managing to stay so trim. Needless to say I was pretty surprised when she suddenly died over the weekend at age 29. d

That's a crazy kind of work ethic, not even taking a day off from work for TERMINAL CANCER. I don't even know what my point is here, I'm just a bit daunted by the concept of working to death.

I dont think the workers from poorer countries think they are being screwed. I mean, from the standpoint of what they could be making, maybe, but from the standpoint of what they were making, not really.

That's why we need to stand up for them. I don't mean keep them out, I mean make the H1B program less about indentured servitude and more about citizenship.

Right now, H1B is used as an unofficial visa on the green-card/citizenship path. It takes about 5 years of continuous residence to get a green card if you are in the country on an H1B. But an H1B is only good for 6 years. You can only get a green-card if you are sponsored by your current employer. If you change employers, the process starts over. So if you want a green card you are effectively a hostage of your current employer.

I say modify the H1B visa program to be an official citizenship-seeking visa. Require H1B visa holders also apply for a green-card starting as soon as they are on US soil and make that application the visa holder's responsibility and take the employer completely out of the loop.

Because turn about is fair play. Try going to one of those countries that "your friends" are from and getting a job.Good luck with that. The vast majority of other countries do not allow non-citizens to get jobs at all.

As an American, it would take me less than two weeks to get a visa approved to work in India. That's because the tax rate on foreign workers is 34%. Throw the VAT on top of that, plus living expenses in an ex-pat community, and not very much money would leave their country.

Unlike the H-1B, which U.S. companies use primarily to bring in cheap labor, India is very interested in importing skills they can learn from, especially American English teachers or technical mentors. You would not believe how eager they are for such people. They recognize that their global position as a "low cost country" is only temporary, and will ultimately dwindle as more of their population shifts out of poverty and they become more expensive. They're taking full advantage of the opportunity now so when the Western money dries up they'll have a better trained workforce.

It seems to me that a more "open" workforce market can only be a good thing if it breaks down the barriers that allow companies in India, China, wherever to offer work for a pittance, when those workers can just go to another country and get a better living wage.

----

1) Why should I care about the "barriers" and wages of other countries when there are people unemployed and starving here?

2) Why should we help these other countries reform their own labor practices at our expense?

The H1-B is suppose to assist companies in filling gaps when the local labor pool cannot provide. It was *intended* to be an "America First" solution. Instead it has been co-opted as a way to keep labor costs down rather than paying IT talent what the market demands.

Forgive me, but I dont really understand why people in this country deserve jobs more than people in another country, particularly if theyre more skilled or asking for less money.

You know why members of Congress are called Representatives?

Because they're supposed to represent us. They are supposed to stand up for our interests. Not because Americans are somehow cosmically more worthy than non-Americans, but because it's our fucking country and it is supposed to be run for the benefit of "ourselves and our posterity."

If Indians want good stuff then they have their own democratically elected government to go to. I expect the Indian government to put the interests of Indians over the interests of Americans, but likewise I expect the U.S. government to put the interests of Americans over the interests of foreigners.

Thank god someone with a brain saved me the trouble of writing that out.

We seem to be the only country more interested in making everyone besides ourselves (assuming you exclude corporate 'personas') happy...at our own expense.

Unemployment remains high, jobs are not particularly easy to come by for many, pay is lower than it should be, companies are cutting jobs and marginalizing other work, and so on. Do we really need to add another several hundred thousand jobs for non-citizens where the majority of the money will simply leave the country? Other than serving corporate greed, it does nothing to help our country. Tax them at 50% and put that money into training for US citizens.

Honestly with where unemployment is right now, the whole program SHOULD have been terminated. Those Representatives should consider who they represent these days.

The thing is, I really respect what the Indian government does for Indians. I've known a truly huge number of Indians since I started in IT... staggeringly huge, and I really like them. I find them to be good reliable friends.

Let's face it though, these laws aren't being put into place to help Indian techies (they do help them, but that's a side effect). They are being put into place to lower labor costs for large tech companies. Tech companies have decided that they are paying too much for labor, and they go to their stooges in Congress and say, "We're paying to much for labor, flood the market with H1-B's so labor will be cheaper." Their stooges in Congress think of the money they will get in graft, go "ch-ching" and pass the laws that the tech company owners want.

If there really is a labor shortage, more naturalized citizens is the right way to fill it, not the complex H1-B visa. Another fact about my Indian friends? They are great people but they move around the country like soldiers being stationed here, and then stationed there. It's got nothing to do with what they want, either. A contract runs out in sunny Georgia and they may next find themselves in icy NYC.

However, I don't feel particularly picked on because this happens all across the economy and the problem is that almost every law we get is based on graft (or increasing police state power) rather than the public good. It's why copyright length keeps getting extended. It's why we can't import drugs from where they are cheaper, and so on.

We've decided unchecked, rampant graft is going to be the order of the day in Washington, and we get a country that is run by corruption because of it.

Read, "4 Amendments and a Funeral" [democratic...ground.com] to see how Washington works. However, a caution, both political parties are currently driven by graft, don't fool yourself into seeing either as "the good guys."

It's the same as with outsourcing - it enriches companies and short-sells Americans. Expanded H1B program would make unappealing to invest in education in America. There would be no more need to invest in future generations if company could get workers you need w/o spending any money. In addition H1B workforce's living expenses are lower than of American workers which in turn depresses salaries of American workers.

For example, right now my friends company is paying 50% of her expenses to finish her MBA, it costs them $20k. If company could import someone they would be net ~$20k profit (maybe more if they can pay less for the same job) and my friend would be either unemployed or less educated.

First, the countries economy depends on its citizens having jobs. If you, instead, give those jobs to non-citizens, then you hurting the economy.

Most people here on H1B's send a large amount of their salary back home. That means that the money paid to them is leaving our economy, and instead propping up other economies.

I have no problem with immigrants getting jobs, because immigrants are here permanently. H1B's are temporary visas, with no intention of becoming permanent citizens (although many do find ways to convert).

We don't have enough jobs for all our IT workers as it is, we don't need to be importing more unless there isn't anyone here that can fill the role.

It's political lingo for removing the cap. You see, politicans know full well that people will buy whatever as long as the packaging is right. Thus the cap is, in reality, removed, but in words it remains.

I'm not a citizen and yet I not only work, but I pay taxes and, oh horror of horrors, I invest all my money here. And please, cut the BS about not enforcing immigration laws. If my status were to lapse for some reason, they'd be knocking on my door and kicking me out of the country within a couple of months. There is a big difference between an undocumented immigrant, and one who has a long paper trail behind him. Protip: the latter are easy pickings.

But I don't completely blame you on not having much of a clue of how immigration laws are enforced, because if you asked me anything about immigrating into the countries I am a citizen of, you'd get a blank stare as I never had to deal with any of it. My only beef is that it you're not clever enough to realize that you have no clue what you're talking, nah, spewing about.

Besides, you can't really have, effectively, three different sets of laws (federal, state and local), and expect that it'd be OK for the local police to enforce it all. Either there is a need for FBI and state police, or there isn't, you can't have it both ways. Now it is of course a thing to discuss whether we need all those three layers of policing to begin with.

Why bother? Not only won't they enforce immigration laws, they outright sue state and town PDs who attempt to do so to force them to stop.

Source?

Arizona's S.B, 1070 might be a good place to start looking. The Feds argued before the Supreme Court that enforcing immigration laws was a Federal matter, and that States had no business trying to do so themselves.

The Feds mostly won, but lost on what was probably the most annoying aspect of the law ("your papers, please").

Seriously? You want to see a "news article showing the government suing a town's PD" regarding immigration? For fucks sake. Google 'news article showing the government suing a town's PD + immigration' and hit the I'm feeling lucky button.

Yeah. First link. Was that so hard? I mean, if you're going to take a position and argue something at least make a *SLIGHT* attempt to know what you're talking about.

Related to the discussion, I think it's ridiculous that there are laws on the books which 'can' only be enforced by certain agencies who are quite intentionally being extremely lax in enforcing.

Why? Our border is such a bad fucking joke you could just walk a bomb across the thing along with the dope and slaves brought over it annually, they won't do shit about the scumbag companies that will hire Paco for $3 an hour and make him work in unsafe conditions (and don't give me that "Paco only takes jobs Americans don't want" horseshit, in my area construction USED to be a way a guy who wasn't cut out for college could feed his family. Now you can drive by any site and yell "Immigra!" and watch them scatter like fucking deer and guess who gets stuck for his care when the scumbag contractor puts his ass on a rickety ladder in high winds and he fucks himself up? That would be YOU through higher hospital bills) and they have completely wiped out several professions. Being an IT worker USED to be a good job but between H1-Bs and offshoring I wouldn't recommend my worst enemy go into IT now.

The whole thing is a fucking scam that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as degrees cost us a high 5 digits to get yet they expect us to "compete" with some guy that paid like $5k for HIS degree (if he even has one, so many of those body mills just lie their asses off, you could ask for somebody with 40 years of.NET and they'd send someone right over) so nobody with a functioning brain will go into those fields because they see it ends up 400 guys competing with each other for one fake job ( see this video [youtube.com] for examples. Once you know what to look for you can check your local paper and will find dozens if not hundreds of fake jobs) so the bloodsucking leech of a corp goes "See? We can't get somebody with a dozen degrees to work for less than the guy that cleans puke at the Chuck E Cheese so we NEED more green cards and H1-Bs! Sob!" and write a fucking check to our joke known as "public servants" and there you go, the systematic gutting of the American middle class.

Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson who could see this stuff was coming: "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."

...they won't do shit about the scumbag companies that will hire Paco for $3 an hour...

I truly believe that cracking down on this alone will solve 90% of the immigration problem. If it becomes too risky for companies to hire illegals, there is less incentive to come here illegally and more jobs go to tax-paying Americans. Instead of spending billions on a wall, we could just send feds out to every construction site and fine the living shit out any company who is taking advantage of the system by hiring illegals. The system would pay for itself in short time.

Tyson Foods would never stand for it. They've gotten caught, repeatedly, paying truckers to bring mojados in to work in the Midwest chicken processing plants. It's not because there is a shortage of rednecks willing to be bathed in guts and blood for crap wages, it's because when an illegal gets injured rather than call their worker's comp insurance company they can call La Migra and he gets shipped back to Mexico on the taxpayer's dime. The savings are enormous, and the past fines amounted to less than

All I know is that way too many of legal U.S. contractors are lazy bastards, and the only people who seem to be willing to do any real work are illegal immigrants. It's not even about taking jobs the citizens don't want, it's simply that the citizens seem to be useless. At least that has been my experience. With one exception, every legal contractor I had to deal with turned out in the end to be a piece of lying, lazy scum. The presumably illegal mexican crews hired by some companies were the only ones doin

Fighting the immigrants is the wrong battle. I'd much rather have that Pakistani born programmer be working here as a US citizen - protected by US labor laws and paid a competitive US salary than be "on loan" under an H1-B visa which his employer can use to depress the wages of his other employees.

I'm not be argumentative or sarcastic. Why would I be outraged by the L visa?

Because the L visa is totally immune to US pay law. I was in China in 2008-2010 and while looking for a local job, happened upon IBM consulting. The local payscale was less than $1k US/month. That sounded OK for a local gig because cost of living is so low but the catch was they wanted to send me to the US for a year and pay that same rate. I pointed out US minimum wage was higher than that but the local manager waved this concern away and said they did it all the time; I would be sent on an L visa which allows the employee to be paid home country pay while in the US. I then asked how a US citizen could go to the US on any kind of visa and after a silent pause she abruptly hung up on me (this was the third interview). Whether this is a case of the IBM worldwide doing this or they think they're paying US wages while the local China branch's management collect the difference, I have no idea, but something not at all funny is going on with L visas.

if you want to educate the next generation of IT workers in the US and have them stay here for their lives, adding to the economy, start cutting back on H1Bs now. it's just an excuse to in-shore cheaper help and shoo them away before they start complaining.

Why on earth would we want to do that? Historically our technological innovation has been driven domestically in part because we have such an open policy to immigrants. The space program was dramatically accelerated by accepting German immigrants. The Manhattan Project owes a lot to immigrants. Let's get our collective nationalist heads out of our asses and acknowledge that there are people around the world who are smarter than most unemployed Americans. Unemployment for those with Masters in computer science/engineering is in the low single digits.

Which would you rather happen: foreign talented developers to start their companies in Asia, Europe or South America or for them to be in the states and hopefully develop their idea in the states? Most tech startups are employees who work at Microsoft or Google and then leave to create their company. If they don't come to the US, their good ideas don't come with them and we lose the best ideas in the world because we're afraid a burger flipper won't somehow magically get a job at Google because of the big bad Indian who took his hypothetical job.

The space program was dramatically accelerated by accepting German immigrants.

Try again. We didn't accept them, we captured them. We got Von Braun and the other Nazis and had them work for us. Our rockets kept exploding but it was the Nazis, with their usual efficiency, who got us on the right track and took us to the moon.

Not at all. They surrendered to the US because they were the less scary choice. The Communists were always a rival to the Nazis in the Wiemar Republic and were blamed in large part for the downfall of Germany during the First World War. So there was some hate going in to the invasion of Russia.

Then toss in all the bad blood created between Germany and Russia thereafter, Joseph Stalin as a remarkably scary leader even by Nazi standards, and that Von Braun and various members of his group may have been partly responsible for the deaths of Russian soldiers (I read that prisoners of war were enslaved at Mittelwerk (and died there) and the largest portion of such in Nazi Germany would have been Soviet).

Not at all. They surrendered to the US because they were the less scary choice

FTFWikipedia article above:

After the surrender, von Braun spoke to the press:
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”

So it is possible he made up that part just to sound good to American ears, but he did say it.

We're not talking about importing cream of the crop folks. No Einsteins or Von Brauns. We're talking about entry level programmers and tech flunkies.

Sure, there are good people in that pile - that really isn't the point. The issue is that the transnational corporations are trying to drive down costs (and drive up profits) irrespective of the local damage caused. They can go elsewhere, after all.

All it takes is getting a few cheap whores^Hpoliticians to do their bidding. Just the price of business.

Coming to the US with a green card is very difficult. I know of nobody who did that where I work (federal government science lab).I have a PhD in physics, I came to the US on an H1B visa (as did many of my colleagues).Then, after several years, I got a green card, then a few years after that I became a US citizen.That path (H1B -> green card -> citizen) has been followed by very many of my scientist and engineer colleagues.I'd like to think that we make a strong contribution to the US scientifically, economically, and culturally.

You are completely correct. But I hope you understand that the H-1B scam does not do this. H-1B workers are not immigrants. The H-1B program is badly abused to the determent of American workers. Slashdot has covered this before [slashdot.org].

Why on earth would we want to do that? Historically our technological innovation has been driven domestically in part because we have such an open policy to immigrants. The space program was dramatically accelerated by accepting German immigrants. The Manhattan Project owes a lot to immigrants. Let's get our collective nationalist heads out of our asses and acknowledge that there are people around the world who are smarter than most unemployed Americans. Unemployment for those with Masters in computer scie

I worked under H1B and have switched several employers over time - it is doable, but it is not as easy as you think. If you find another employer before you are fired, and if that employer agrees to file the paperwork for H1B, then yes, you can "easily" switch jobs. I was working as a contractor for a company that wanted to hire me directly and even made me an offer, but it was too bad for them, since neither they nor their lawyer knew what to do and I ended up going somewhere else.

Also, you have 10 days to get out of the country after you are fired. However, these 10 days will still be counted as a gap in your legal status and in most cases you will have to leave the country to get a new H1B, i.e. you will be a the mercy of the immigration officer in your own country and even then officer at the border can refuse you the entry w/o an explanation.

As a Green Card holder or a Citizen, you can go to your boss and say "give me a raise or I quit", but as an H1B worker you are pretty much stuck with whatever pay was given to you. There are also legal tricks to make sure that you don't get the salary that company promised the government they will pay you.

After a while H1B holder would want to get a Green Card, but that is a long process that requires you to stick with your employer once documents are submitted. This creates another opportunity for employers to impose their will on you.

Current laws help companies to find cheaper labor at expense of Americans. Instead of raising caps, they should change laws, so that it is more costly to hire H1B workers, i.e. tax companies for each and every H1B and if they really need these workers they will have no problem paying the tax.

No, but the foreigners shouldn't be chosen just because they are willing to work for less. What they should be required to do is offer the new worker the same pay as the highest paid job in the company (including benefits, bonuses). If they are unable to find a worker that will work for that, they should be required to offer the same deal to an H-1B candidate. After all, if his skills are in such short supply he must be worth at least as much as a CEO.

With unemployment so high in the US as it is....they'd better sign off that EVERY US citizen potential employee is hired first....then start letting outsiders in.

Absolutely why the H1-B Visa program is a major problem. H1-B's work cheaper than similarly skilled citizens, and so are preferred by employers. In turn it will keep those otherwise employable American IT workers on unemployment. This legislation should be treated as an assault on the US citizens that it is.

That requirement is already easily circumvented, and the method is already in place.

HR departments frequently use applicant scanning software that (intentionally or unintentionally) is badly configured to make finding a qualified applicant near impossible. Sometimes they make impossible requirements, such as being a developer for languages and platforms for a number of years that exceeds their time in existence.

Not only might you need to have 100% of the desired skills, you sometimes have to guess the right keyword they use for that skill, and will get rejected if you use synonymous terms to describe that skill. You are also screwed if you happen to have a skill that is almost completely transferable to what they are looking for, but just not the exact skill.

Companies don't want to invest in training anymore. They want you to be trained by another company, who also likely have the same attitude towards training.

Companies don't want to hire someone unless they are already employed elsewhere. I recall reading that you have better odds of getting a job with a criminal record than if you are currently out of work. However, that doesn't mean that they are going to offer you enough to make it worth it to leave your current job.

The list goes on..

Maybe the reason they can't find the right people in the U.S. is because some are being unreasonable (and/or possibly idiotic) greedy assholes.

This isn't about "multiculturalism", nobody cares what nationality, color or religion they are. This is about keeping wages low. This is what it is always about. Cost and profit are what corporations do, they have no concept of anything else.

No more H1Bs, slavery was abolished a long time ago. If corporations truly cannot find qualified citizens (and I think they define that as capabilities/$), then I would allow them to sponsor a certain number of people for green cards. If avg. wages dropped the next year, I would not allow them to sponsor any at all. Then I would say anyone here on H1B may either apply for a green card, or serve the rest of his sentence and return home, but there would be no more H1Bs.

If this is truly about labor shortage, this process would work fine. But we know there's plenty of people out there who can do the job who are under/un-employed.

If there weren't a shortage of developers, then programmers wouldn't commonly be making triple the median income.

Where are programmers routinely making more than triple the median income? The median income in San Francisco is $40K, but most programmers are not making $120K. There are certainly exceptions for experienced developers, but based on some recent hires I made, there are plenty of programmers in SF making in the $85 - $100K range.

I like that idea, hey there must be a shortage of "C" level executives since they make so much, lets H-1B a bunch of them in from 3rd world companies. We should be able to drop the median CEO salary from ~500 times the average employee to ~50 times the average employee.

I'm sorry, but I see no reason why programmers shouldn't make triple the median income. If anyone could do it, that right there is a huge incentive TO do it. I define a shortage as "there are more jobs than applicants". I've never worked anywhere that we didn't reject 50% of the people who interviewed for various arbitrary reasons (i.e. didn't have niche skill in X, would require ramp up, couldn't drop-in), and that was after HR rejected countless resumes.

The only "shortage" of jobs owes from our snobbery and cliquishness, because we CAN be, there are so many applicants we can shop until we get bored with it. If we just had to hire anyone who walked in the door, THEN I'd believe we have a shortage.

Except that you can't really "in-shore cheaper help" very easily using H-1Bs--you're required to pay at least the "prevailing wage". Perhaps foreigners artificially keep the prevailing wage from rising, but it can't go down due to immigrants under the current system. Also, you're supposed to show that no American wants the job at hand, which is rather difficult to show.

And the H-1B has a time limit of 6 years, I believe. The foreigner has to get a green card or get out before the visa expires.

Also, think of the alternative--if you are correct that the foreigners will work for less, if you keep them out of the US, then the tech firms will instead set up offices in India. It makes more sense to keep the jobs in the US, use a system to make sure the foreigners don't depress wages in the US.

Except that you can't really "in-shore cheaper help" very easily using H-1Bs--you're required to pay at least the "prevailing wage". Perhaps foreigners artificially keep the prevailing wage from rising, but it can't go down due to immigrants under the current system. Also, you're supposed to show that no American wants the job at hand, which is rather difficult to show.

It's in how you define the prevailing wage and how you define the job requirements.

If a company can hire a senior DBA for $90K even though the local employee with equivalent experience would have be paid $110K, they can pay back their legal fees for the H1-B application in less than a year. It's easy to fudge job descriptions and pay scales to say whatever you want them to say. For example, it's usually something like "Employee must have experience with XYZ application that no one outside of the hiring company uses, then they can point to the off-shore contractor that's been working for them remotely for a year and say "Only he has that experience!" -- oh, and we're going to pay him what we'd pay an entry-level DBA because he only has 1 year of verifiable DBA experience".

That depends. I'm applying for a H1B (after years of working with the US companies remotely) and I'm going to be in the top tax bracket. I'm not going to undercut anybody on salary, obviously.

US has always attracted people from all over the world, and that has always been a great advantage for the US economy. Our startup (that has been recently bought by a large company) consists of 6 people: 2 Russians, 1 Israeli, 1 Finnish, 1 Indian and one US-born person, I think we can speak about 10 languages in total. Making immigration more complex by cutting the H1B would just drive a lot of labor to other countries.

It would be really great if H1B included the requirement for a minimal salary at least 1.5 times more than the "prevailing wage" crap that exists right now.

That depends. I'm applying for a H1B (after years of working with the US companies remotely) and I'm going to be in the top tax bracket. I'm not going to undercut anybody on salary, obviously.

The top tax bracket starts at $400,000, so, with deductions, you'd have to be getting paid somewhere around $450,000 to $500,000 per year on an H1-B. What is the job? That doesn't sound anywhere near the average H1-B wage of about $75,000.

Yep, it's pretty close. The job is software development in a pretty senior position (since our startup got bought). A lot of people I know who are on H1B also receive pretty good salaries (in the 100-120k range). H1Bs are not exclusively used to undercut the US labor, and most H1B holders are actually actively interested in reducing the amount of H1B fraud.

The truth is more onerous than that. The thing is, they *don't* want that. No major American company actually *wants* to wipe out the middle class. After all, who would you sell your products to if nobody has any money? Companies need a strong middle class and are well aware of that fact. Yet they still work to reduce wages as cost cutting measures for a temporary return. It's blatantly self-destructive behavior that everybody seems to be in on, aware of, wants to stop, but consistently take the wrong routes.

If there were a few guys up at the top in swivel chairs with fluffy cats going "mwaahahahaha" as they plot and scheme, that would be one thing. They could be stopped. How do you stop a society from marching over the cliff - fully aware the cliff is there, fully aware they don't want to fall off it, yet somehow not willing or able to stop themselves from doing it?

You start doing that, putting in all of those fudge factors, and you end up just pulling a number out of your ass. Typically the number agrees with whatever political persuasion you hold dear. Might as well be honest and put the number that you 'want' in it.

The H1B visa only allows a foreigner to work in the US for the company that sponsors their visa, therefore, H1B visa slaves must accept any working conditions and pay that they are given. If they don't like the work situation their only choice is to go back to where they came from.

I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours. We need our jobs to rebuild our individual financial infrastructure. Younger workers need to be able to pay off those credit cards.

Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers. First it would force companies to start giving people with a criminal record a chance. Felons at age 26 with marketable skills in IT, web design, or coding/software engineering are still Felons...they never make it past HR...

Just look at any thread on/. about getting hired...Human Resources is a difficult barrier even with a spotless record.

A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way. State university systems are economical and could be adapted to be essentially profit-neutral and give 100% financial aid to all who are accepted.

So yes, Americans do need to get off their asses, get some skillz and get to work...adding more *non-US* workers than we already allow is dumb right now

1. No more questions about prior felony convictions. It is too easy to get popped with a felony, a class of crime that used to be limited to serious criminal offenses.2. Tie this to an additional H1-B payroll tax, with the revenue going to online certification training (much like the ACM offers as part of their membership), as well as vouchers for a certain amount of tests.3. Make it more desirable to hire and promote junior staff. H1-B is attractive because they have fewer workplace protections, and have to take a bigger gamble to come to the US to work. Fix some of those restrictions (such as severe limitations in job-hopping), and institute measures that promote hiring interns and junior IT people.

Right now, it is harder than heck to find qualified IT staff, and HR departments are all asking for 3-5 years of experience in whatever they are hiring for. The problem isn't in the lack of willing senior staff who want to train and mentor people. It isn't in the lack of available training for the unemployed. It is in the lack of will on the part of C level execs who don't want it, and can't see the labor shortage coming up on them, or what that can mean in the long term (in my view, out past 5 years. In the view of a CEO, the long view is not more than 5 years).

I think foreign workers in all jobs are good, but increasing the number of visas granted is bad in an economy like ours.

So you don't want to sound xenophobic but you really are. Foreign workers contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and bring specific talents that are badly needed by companies but you think we should hire Americans just because they are Americans?

Google, Yahoo, IBM, etc *should* be forced to hire more US workers.

You've never tried to run a business have you? Forcing a company to hire substandard talent is literally counterproductive. Companies need to and should hire the best talent they can get regardless of where the person is from. If that happens to be people from the US that is terrific. Companies need specific skills and those skills don't have anything to do with national boundaries. If the US workers are the best available option then I guarantee you that companies will hire them. If they aren't the best then they don't really deserve the jobs now do they?

A second reason to oppose more H1-B visas is that it would force Americans to go back to college or get marketable skills another way.

So less competition for jobs is somehow supposed to push Americans to get more training? Curious logic since generally less competition has exactly the opposite effect. If I don't have to compete for my job, I'm going to have zero motivation to spend money or time on additional education.

So you don't want to sound xenophobic but you really are. Foreign workers contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and bring specific talents that are badly needed by companies but you think we should hire Americans just because they are Americans?

As a foreigner in USA who worked on H1B, I will tell that, yes law makers should be creating laws that make it easier and cheaper to hire Americans than H1B workers. Don't think of good or evil in terms of "people" or "world", but try to realize that each and every country should focus on their own first and should not be increasing own unemployment just not to look xenophobic. H1B's should be a temporary solution while you are training your own citizens.

H1B visa are for specialty occupations [wikipedia.org] requiring highly specialized knowledge. H1B visas are not for people who pick produce and calling them "slaves" is an absurd comparison. Real slavery is a horrific crime and slaves certainly don't get paid.

US workers are not the best option as they will want market wages.

Market wages are the wages that they can get. If others are willing to work for less then your "market wages" then what you are calling market wages isn't. Just because you think you deserve more money doesn't mean a thing if no one will pay you that amount. If

Importing people who will be automatically put into a process of exporting if they lose their job always seemed more than a bit cruel to me.

The effect of H1b has been to flood the market with fake job offers (intended to find no one available), increase the desperation of the average job seeker (where it doesn't lower wages directly, it has other effects), and to shift the job market gradually overseas as intimate knowledge of US business is shifted to people who aren't allowed to remain in the US market.

It's a mixed result - but mostly negative for the US at large.

Why not just allow more immigrants for technical fields? That way, they can start companies here, they don't have to live in such fear while working, and can pay socially beneficial taxes when they do (statistically) reach the higher incomes they are bound to reach.

Passing laws just to increase profit margins of companies at the expense of workers seems highly corrupt/inefficient. We're a nation of immigrants - we shouldn't shy away from making the nation stronger with citizens - and we've had huge problems with, um, drawing distinctions about labor variants of citizens in the past.

Importing people who will be automatically put into a process of exporting if they lose their job always seemed more than a bit cruel to me.

The rule that H1B visa holders lose their right to be in the country if they lose their job is one of the attractions of H1B holders for bad employers. Imagine, if you will, an abusive boss or company that's making you put in lots of 80+ hour work weeks for $45K a year (It was supposed to be closer to $75K when you took the job, but for some reason the deal changed after you moved to take the job). Now, you have 2 basic options: You can quit, or you can put up with it.

As a US citizen, if you quit, you might be unemployed for a while, which will suck, but you have a decent chance of finding new work sooner or later and have access to social safety net programs if you need them. As an H1B Visa holder, if you quit, you have to leave the country basically immediately and your best bet is going to work in your home country for $30K a year for a different abusive boss / company. Which means that the US citizen is more likely to quit when abused than an H1B holder is.

And I don't blame the H1B holders for coming to the US to work - they're doing this because it's the best they can do. But I will absolutely be angry at the employers who want to cut costs by making it difficult to quit and then abusing their employees.

This is unthinkable. It's this kind of corporate pandering that has gotten us into the unemployment problem we're currently in. I have no problem with hiring people from other countries -- when there is a surplus of work to go around.

Here's hoping Senator Bernie Sanders pushes back again on this one. Anyone familiar with the Senator knows that he has been a thorn in the side of H1-B advocates, introducing and pushing amendments to limit the program and fund US STEM for years.

Don't create more visa's, give the workers easy pathways to citizenship. Work on an H1-b for 5 years without run-ins with the law and you're a citizen. If you don't want citizenship then you lose your visa. Simple as that. Is there not enough skilled labor? Or is there not enough cheap labor? Making more visas brings in cheap labor. Making more citizens brings in talented labor. If you're a law abiding person and go through the proper channels citizenship should be easy in this country. I work in a shop with a lot of H1-B people, from India, Russia, Israel, etc... and I'd be happy to have any of them get citizenship here. They're great people and I like most of them better than my asshole neighbors.

As people above have pointed out there should be a minimum salary for H1-Bs. This salary should be borderline absurd. Then on top of that there should be a special H1-B tax on that salary bringing it down to below what is typically earned in that field. Then 100% of the tax should fund education or training in that exact field. So if H1-B programmers are hired it goes to programming education. If H1-B snake charmers are being hired then it goes to a snake charming school. This way the government doesn't pick winners for educational grants, they pick themselves.

At no point should it be more attractive to hire a H1-B than it is to hire a local of the same qualification. If the system was properly tuned it would always be a last resort to hire a H1-B not the preferred case as with many exploitative companies. Then in theory there wouldn't need to be a cap.

Personally I have always thought that any work you hire in cheap countries should have their labors taxed until the domestic company had paid the same as if the work were done locally. So if you have a company in country X that is getting the work done for $0.50(shipping included) per unit because they pay their people pennies and pollute the crap out of some river and the domestic rate is $1.00 per unit then there should be a $0.50 per unit tax. So if you think the offshore company does it better then you get them to do it. This prevents the economic concept of us not only importing their products but prevents the import of their crappy standard of living.

Oddly enough the above idea encourages simply paying higher wages when you do find yourself having to hire outside help. Thus raising the standard of living in other places.

Realistically, I view an ability to bring in highly skilled workers as a huge boon for us. Tax revenues, technological innovation, business agility - etc. People who are really driving technology and innovation create way more value than they capture and they become the rising tide that lift all boats.

But how can you identify them? We all know companies that want to import workers for less skilled jobs carefully tailor the job descriptions to avoid any domestic competition, don't publicize the jobs widely, etc.

Salary is the answer. We should prioritize H1-B visa imports by salary. The more you are paying the worker you import, the higher on the list they get to be. Any increase in the cap requires a certain number of workers at the top of the salary curve; if your salary would put you in the top 1% of workers in any science or technology field, then come on in; I don't care how high the "cap" goes. As you move toward the middle of the bell curve, the total number of workers we'll import declines. We shouldn't import even one worker below the median salary. I don't think we should move an inch over the current cap unless everyone over the cap is at least in the top 20%.

I noted with interest a recent advert in one of the newspapers here in Belize. It was offering Belizeans jobs in New Jersey driving ice-cream trucks for $8.50 an hour. On a six-month H-2B visa.I realize $8.50 is not a whole lot but can they really find no Americans to do it? Incidentally, a laborer in Belize makes about a quarter of that and a hot meal costs about $2.00.

My wife is a software product manager. Her product development is split between the "tough stuff" and closely synchronized systems interfacing work done by American citizens, and the "easy stuff" which is mainly HTML and JavaScript web GUI stuff done by a large Indian consulting company. The Indian company (an investor in the product) keeps a project manager for their Indian folks in the US to coordinate on the product better, and the actual coders are in India.

The Indian project manager has been in the US for years with his family (I suspect his kids feel as American as Indian). But his H1-B is around to run out. He and his family has to go back to India.

But not to worry! The Indian consulting company is sending a new H1-B guy over for project management.

My great-grandmother stepped off a ship with no skills, looked around for work, and then got citizenship after a few years. It is insane that we are bringing skilled folks (and their smart kids) into the US and kicking them out again.

I've been involved in several incidents where immigration rules have messed with my industry. There was a German engineer who had to do the "go back to Germany" thing for a few years because of a screw up. I've seen Canadian tech people turned around at the border by immigration when going to fix a system in Detroit. This is not helping us.

How about we agree to that cap increase, but only if H1-B visas have two conditions attached:

1. The visa is only valid as long as the applicant is employed. If he's unemployed for more than 30 days, the visa is no longer valid.

2. The visa is granted to the employee, not the company, and goes with the employee if he accepts another job.

Companies want to bring in foreign applicants because they can get them cheaper than hiring locally (otherwise, why go through the hassle?). Change the economic rules so they can't low-ball salaries without risking other companies poaching their employees with better offers and I'll bet H1-Bs become a lot less popular.

How about. But, it won't happen. The real incentive here is profit in the Tech Sector. American developers are paid a living wage (most of the time). This bill allows American tech companies to bring in workers who cannot compete in the open market for the best pay. This allows the tech companies to pay them much less than an American. The powers that be may want low unemployment, but they also want low wages.

H1B is not free (application is quite expensive actually), and the employer doesn't get to set the salary as pleases him. Usually, immigration will return a "ok, but a 20% more than proposed". I definitely don't think that applying to a position and saying the recruiter that you'll need a H visa (and all the associated cost) helps your case.

Sometime, local workforce is not available without retraining. Now since everybody bright in the US gets a law or MD degree, there is a shortage of bright IT/tech people

And thanks to all those lawyers that do get work doing medical malpractice suits, MD degrees aren't much fun either due to insurance costs. It's kinda turned into a less glamorous service sector job these days, with doctors getting overworked by stingy care providers to maximize their return on investment.

I suppose there's still glamour in the "medical tourism" industry, though... where people fly around the world to other, less litigious countries to visit affordable doctors / dentists for major work.